The Time in Between

by Kristen Ashley

  And it was ghastly, my mother freezing to death (or bleeding to death, no one knew which came first).

  I’d been in shock not only losing her, but losing her before I could make amends (or find some way to convince her to allow me to make amends, and I’d lost Dad the same way), but also her dying in such a distressing manner.

  Patrick knew that, so because of that he was even less thrilled that Caylen, my brother, had been so awful to me.

  But it was awful of me to think that it was pure Caylen when, not two months after Mom died, he’d divorced his wife (because Mom would have lost her mind, her brilliant, genius, perfect eldest child doing something like leaving his wife and legally severing ties with her), and he’d left.

  He’d then done something else very Caylen, moving across the country, leaving not only his wife but his two kids behind.

  He was a software designer and a good one. The company he worked for had headquarters outside of San Francisco. But he could work anywhere.

  So he did, in a remote town in Maine one hundred miles north of Magdalene.

  It would seem I wasn’t the only Webster child who liked solitude.

  His children flew out to visit him once a month. He flew to visit them once a month too. Apparently this was working for all of them and mostly, according to the PI, because my brother’s children could just about stomach four days a month with their father. More was not as easily tolerated.

  I skidded the papers out in a fan on the bed. Papers, which were the reports from the private investigator that Patrick had hired, that stated, as well as all of that, my brother hiked, he fished, he sailed, he biked, he worked.

  He did whatever Caylen wanted to do.

  I took a sip of wine, swallowed it, and then I took a very deep breath, my gaze going to the second, thicker folder.

  Patrick had told me about his private investigator and what he’d done three weeks before he’d died. He’d given me the envelope with the folders in it then as well.

  I hadn’t touched it until over a month after he’d gone.

  Now, the second folder, everything in it I’d read so many times, I’d lost count.

  And I opened it again right then.

  Paper-clipped to the inside, front left of that folder was an eight by ten picture of a tall, dark-haired, extraordinarily handsome man walking down a sidewalk I now recognized as being on Cross Street, the main street of Magdalene.

  He had a child on his hip.

  She had on a little cream hat that had little cat ears coming from the top sides of it, the insides of the ears pink, at the front of it at her forehead was a pink nose with little black yarn whiskers knitted to the sides. She had a little pink, puffy jacket on. And she had little cream mittens on her hands with little gray kitty faces on the outsides, pink noses and ears.

  She had dark hair flowing from under her cute hat.

  She had amazing hazel eyes.

  Her name was Janie.

  And in that picture, she had been two.

  She was now four.

  My eyes slid to the man.

  Coert Yeager, the sheriff of Derby County Maine (said “darby,” like the English pronounced it).

  A man I knew almost all of our acquaintance as Tony.

  Since the now-Sheriff Yeager had left Denver, or nearly since he’d left, Patrick had had him followed.

  Not constantly. Patrick didn’t set a PI to stalking him. But reports were expected every quarter.

  And they were received.

  Thus I knew Sheriff Yeager came to Derby County, to Magdalene, to accept a post as a deputy at the sheriff’s department. A much different post in this small, picturesque tourist town on coastal Maine than the dangerous undercover police work he did in Denver.

  I also knew he wasn’t fond of his boss and he made this publicly known by running against him eight years into his tenure as a deputy. The campaign was acrimonious but apparently enough of Derby County’s citizens didn’t like the old sheriff that Coert had become the new one, beating his boss by a slim nine percent margin.

  The second election against the same opponent he’d won by forty-one percent.

  His last election he’d run unopposed.

  He was known as good-natured, perceptive, dedicated, hard-working, sharp and just.

  I further knew that he’d dated, lived with and become engaged to a beautiful woman named Darcy, who, after six years, the last two with his ring on her finger, he’d ended things with. She was hurt, bitter and moved to Marblehead, Massachusetts to escape him.

  I understood that last part.

  Boy, did I understand that.

  He’d then dated, lived with but didn’t become engaged to a beautiful woman named Kim, who, after four years, saw the writing on the wall after what had happened to the one before.

  She was not wrong.

  He ended things.

  She, on the other hand, decided to make it so he wouldn’t.

  According to the townspeople, who were happy to talk about this juicy tidbit in particular, after four years without even a hint the couple didn’t know how to protect themselves from an unplanned conception, the fact she turned up two months pregnant a month after he broke it off with her was widely considered her attempt at entrapment.

  Sheriff Yeager didn’t feel like being trapped.

  Due to the risks involved, he waited to demand a DNA test until after the child was born.

  What he did not do was reconcile with his ex in order to do “right” by the child, something that surprised many, for that was something folks commonly considered Sheriff Yeager would do (another reason many thought her getting pregnant was entrapment).

  The DNA test was performed after the birth.

  She was his.

  They named her Jane but called her Janie.

  I knew why.

  I’ll never saddle a kid with a crazy name. Somethin’ he’s gotta spell or repeat or correct someone who’s sayin’ it wrong. My kids are gonna be named names like John, Nick, Max, Mary, Jane, Beth. Solid names. Good names.

  This, Tony had told me while we were in bed after we’d made love.

  At the time, I thought this was an odd thing for him to say, especially the determination behind it. His name was Tony. His last name was Wilson. Neither were hard to say or spell.

  I would understand why when I’d learned he was actually Coert, pronounced “Cort” and spelled in a way I’d never seen before.

  Thus it was not surprising his daughter was called Janie.

  The private investigator reported that after her birth, Coert stayed with his ex, sleeping on the couch in her apartment for three months in order to help her ease into having a child, be a part of their daughter’s first months on this earth, but also in waiting for when Janie was able, and it was appropriate, that she be away from her mother in order to be only with her dad.

  From that point on, he had her every other week and even dragged his ex into court when she threatened leaving Magdalene and taking their daughter with her.

  He’d won.

  Suffice it to say something the PI didn’t have to report (but he still did), this ex not achieving her aim of trapping Sheriff Yeager but instead buying her ex-boyfriend sleeping on her couch for months and sharing a child with the man she loved enough (albeit clearly unhealthily) to do something that horrible to was not something she relished.

  It didn’t help matters that Coert also found time to date.

  He was not a serial dater or a player. He asked out women he was interested in and not once, not even once since he’d left Denver, did he ever ask out a woman that he didn’t see at least five times before he ended it.

  Their relationship now was apparently a lot easier (if also clearly not everything it could be considering all she’d done) as she’d realized she had every other week free, so she was also dating.

  Regardless that Janie’s parents were getting along enough to co-parent, this situation could have been frustrating, upsetting or even inf
uriating.

  If there wasn’t a little girl with dark hair and beautiful hazel eyes that looked utterly adorable in a kitty cat hat.

  I had no little girl or little boy, and in the years since I met Tony at that backyard party I’d had very limited opportunities to make one.

  Patrick and I didn’t sleep together. Not once. That wasn’t who we were. Not at the start. Not ever. We even had separate bedrooms from the very beginning.

  He was not my lover.

  He was my savior.

  He’d been sixty-five when we’d married.

  I’d been twenty-four.

  I did not marry him because of his fifteen-thousand-square-foot mansion. I did not marry him because he was the man behind Moreland Heating and Air, a company that had vans moving in sixteen states in the western part of the U.S.

  I married him because he loved me, he wanted to protect me, he wanted to keep me safe and he wanted to give me a family.

  Not of my own.

  His.

  It wasn’t a road lined with roses we skipped down happily. It was rocky. Especially in the beginning when Patrick’s children thought I was what everyone, including Coert Yeager, thought I was.

  But he was Patrick Moreland. If he put his mind to something, he did it.

  And he did it.

  I took a very large sip of wine and shoved aside the stack of papers to get to the first of many eight by ten photographs at the back.

  Janie, on her feet in a little pink corduroy pinafore dress with a little girl’s long-sleeved thermal under it, which had big, bright pink, purple and aqua daisies on it and bright aqua tights under it, with little girl pink boots (that looked like Ugg) on her feet. She was arched back, smiling, her hand lifted and covering the smiling huge, beautiful lips of a beautiful, dark-haired man who was bent more than double to put his face in hers.

  That was taken last October.

  It was my favorite.

  And it destroyed me.

  I flipped the folder closed, hastily shoving all the papers back into it and doing the same with my brother’s.

  Coert and Caylen lived one hundred miles apart.

  In what Patrick refused to believe was a coincidence (or say, a cruel twist of fate) my estranged brother and the only man I ever loved (that way) both had moved from Denver and now lived in coastal Maine, one hundred miles apart.

  Patrick said it was a sign.

  Patrick said it was time.

  Patrick said he knew with everything that was him that I was meant to be here in Maine. That those two men were going to give me my happily ever after.

  Patrick was absolutely sure of it.

  He was also most likely very wrong.

  But I owed him everything.

  So I owed him this.

  And from it, I’d have my lighthouse. I’d have my views of the sea. I’d have a fabulous place where the family could come, vacation and spend time with me.

  And Caylen was one hundred miles away. After he delivered his last cut, I’d never see him again.

  Now Coert . . .

  Well, if he could handle living in the same town and co-parenting with a woman who tried to trap him by getting pregnant with his child without his knowledge . . .

  He could put up with every once in a while (and less, if I could manage it), seeing me.

  It was after I signed the papers.

  After I’d made it impossible to turn back, but in an uncommon moment of indecision, I’d realized I’d made a horrible mistake.

  After I’d decided to move forward with the renovations (because the old girl needed them), but I wouldn’t go whole hog because I’d be creating three different spaces to rent out to tourists and not living there at all.

  After I decided my best bet was to give up on Patrick’s dream and go home to Denver.

  It was after all that, I saw it.

  I was returning to the lighthouse because first, it was mine and second, I had an appointment with one of the contractors to go over the site.

  I’d been there three times since making an offer, and I’d seen them growing, the strong shoots of their shamrock-green stems and leaves startling against the greening (but not yet fully back from winter) spring grass all around them.

  But it had been days since I’d been there.

  And the last time I was there, they hadn’t opened.

  Now . . .

  They were open.

  You could see them from afar, but as I drove up the slope to the cliff where my lighthouse was, the spectacular beauty of them increased significantly.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.

  There were three cars and even more bicycles all along the rickety fence surrounding the old girl with people out on foot, phones or cameras up, pointed at the spectacle.

  And the spectacle was a bed of profuse magenta tulips that bled into lips of pure white coming from a sea of shamrock stalks and leaves. There were places where they were more sparse, places that they only trailed through the grass, but all around the lighthouse, the walkways, the outbuildings and much of the open area close to the buildings was a bed of deep pink and startling green.

  With so much on my mind, I had not thought about Googling it to see the pictures.

  Viewing it in all its glory for the first time in person, I was glad I had not.

  I parked my rental by a medium-size SUV that had South Carolina plates and slowly got out of my car, wandering to the fence, staring at what lay before me.

  No.

  Absolutely no.

  When Caylen cut me out and Coert tore me down, I wasn’t going to turn tail and run back to Denver.

  This, all of this, was mine.

  And I was going to keep it.

  I stopped, still in a tulip daze, staring at the display before me, wondering if it was a miracle. I knew a fair bit about gardening and would think that the wind and salty air would mean the plethora of this type of flora wouldn’t grow easily.

  Obviously I was very wrong.

  “Your first time?”

  I looked to the man beside me who had a camera up on a tripod.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  He grinned. “Come up here from South Carolina every other year ’round ’bout this time because my wife likes the shops, I like the restaurants, we both love the sea, but this,” he swung an arm out to my soon-to-be new home, “is what really calls me. Seen it maybe five times over ten years. Never get sick of it.”

  I looked back to my lighthouse.

  He was correct. This was not something you’d ever get sick of.

  “No, I can imagine one never would,” I murmured.

  “The lavender hits around now at Lavender House and the bluebells hit about now at Cliff Blue but it isn’t easy to get to those places,” he shared. “They’re way more private. Still, I’ve driven by several times and they sure are beauties. But this is too beautiful to believe.”

  He was correct about that too (though I hadn’t seen Lavender House or Cliff Blue, but I’d be doing drive-bys).

  “Good news,” he stated. I turned my attention back to him and he kept speaking. “Talk in town, someone’s buying the place. It’s been vacant since forever. Word is, new owner is gonna restore the whole thing to its former glory. Can’t imagine what that’s gonna do to their pocketbook, but I’ll tell you what, if I ever thought I’d have that kind of money, I would drag the wife up here to do just that.” He looked to my lighthouse, its tulips and the sea beyond. “Not sure I’ve ever seen anything this beautiful and I’ve been places. But this, this right here, this is it.”

  I trained my gaze where he was and thought he was again right.

  This was it.

  “So glad someone’s finally gonna take care of the old place,” he muttered.

  “Me too,” I whispered.

  “Gonna set up over there so best be moving. Enjoy,” he bid as he took up his camera and tripod and moved behind me to follow the fence north.

  I kept my eyes on the b
eauty that was now all mine until I sensed movement at my side and looked right.

  A man was out of a pickup that had a construction firm’s information on its door and people were moving their bikes out of his way as he opened the closed gate (Rob and I had forced it closed and Rob had come back with some oil to lubricate the hinges so it’d be relatively useful until I had it replaced).

  I watched him open the gate, walk back to his truck, climb in and drive through.

  The onlookers watched too.

  When he parked and got out to close the gate behind him was when I moved, walking toward him and calling out to forestall him.

  We shook hands at the gate.

  He then closed it and together we walked to the old girl to talk about restoring her to her former glory.

  Use the Girl

  Eighteen years earlier . . .

  IT HAD BEEN WORKING FOR me. Working perfectly. Just what I needed to forget Mom being so mean and controlling. Just what I needed to forget Caylen was such an asshole. Just what I needed to forget how my life had turned on a letter into a disaster.

  It was a tried and true method to get me past the shit of life so I could deal and it was working.

  I was drunk, trashed, totally blotto.

  And that was good.

  Lonnie, Maria and I were also at Wild Bill’s Rally.

  This was mostly for bikers but other people could show, and we’d been showing for five years running. Pitching our tents. Dragging out our beer and vodka filled coolers. Making friends easily and hanging by their campfires at night downing shots, making out (or Maria and Lonnie did, Lonnie put a stop to such things for me and now I knew why). Forging through the hangovers by day only to perk back up with beer, shots, weed and the music Wild Bill provided on the big, makeshift stage in the middle of his just-worked fields, all of this providing a full weekend of fun.

  I wasn’t supposed to be there.

  Not that year.

  I was now responsible. I was now an assistant manager. I had goals. I was on the right path.

  Okay, so the raise I got was only a couple dollars more an hour, but for me, that was a lot.

  And the benefits were better. Better insurance. They even matched a little bit to a retirement account. And I got another week’s vacation.